Hi everyone, I was just wondering who, if anyone here is using Vista 64 bit? Or intending to in the future?

The big benefit is support for more than 4GB of RAM, or to be more accurate, support for more than 3.2GB, as that's all you'll see if you put 4GB in 32-bit Vista / XP.

To run Vista 64 you'll need a processor which understands 64 bit instructions (although that's been built-in for some time now) and 64-bit drivers for your hardware.

There's not many 64-bit applications yet, but most 32-bit ones will run under emulation and there's still benefits to running them on a 64-bit OS. For example, in a Vista 64 system with lots of RAM, Photoshop may still only see a maximum of 3.2GB, but when it thinks it's calling virtual disk-based memory, Vista can actually cache it into spare RAM, thereby greatly improving performance.

I've been testing this for the past few weeks with 6GB of RAM and it works really well.

So anyone else made the move to Vista 64? We could make this a thread dicussing it and hopefully resolving any technical issues. For example, one device which had me stumped for ages was my Microsoft VX1000 webcam which may have 64 bit drivers, but refused to work on my 64-bit Vista system. The problem it turns out is an incompatiblity with the Bios memory remap feature for systems with 4GB of RAM or more. There's a Microsoft hotfix for this, but you do need to request it.

I have been using 64bit Windows XP Professional (Based on the Windows Server 2003 OS, not actually XP) for a good couple years now. Had a quick try of Vista, don't really see the point, compatibility issues, performance decrease (System just ran generally slower), and the fact that it's a brand new operating system, so I just went back to my XP, which is great

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I've had Vista Ultimate x64 on a quad core Opteron machine since the OS was released. While I wouldn't go back to XP Pro on that machine I am certainly not in a hurry to upgrade my mini-ITX form factor machine (email, browsing word-processing) despite the fact that it has a 64 bit Core 2 Duo processor.

Anyway, enough of the heavy duty acronyms. Here are my pros and cons:

Pros

Unlocks the full potential of my 64 bit processors

Makes my full 4GB of RAM available

Standard User Accounts (SUA) - I am probably one of the few who actually like this idea. Logging on as a Standard User means that programs you run or, even worse, programs that get run without your knowledge don't get permission to do things like install software without your express permission. Linux users have enjoyed this protection for years.

DirectX 10 - well it should be a "pro" but DX10 software is still mighty thin on the ground.

The Aero Desktop interface - of course Desktops are generally not much in evidence when you are actually using your computer!

Cons

Driver support - while all my hardware worked from Day 1 the drivers were certainly not feature complete. It has taken NVidia most of the year to provide full support for their 88 series cards, Creative still have work to do with their X-Fi cards (though 5.1 sound works well now) and I still suffer from an obscure incompatibility between my Adaptec RAID card and Apple Quicktime which, if I were fool enough to install it again, means that Quicktime crashes my RAID 5 array!

Software support - some programs refuse to install at all, even when logged on as Administrator: the latest culprit is the new Real Player beta. I still have a couple of games sitting on the shelf. Other programs appear to install but don't run properly. Yet others can be installed but only run successfully when given Administrator privileges if they are started from a SUA. Microsoft still hasn't released a compatible version of Visual Studio (currently in beta).

Standard User Accounts (SUA) - as currently implemented it is a "con" as well as a "pro". Prompts for Administrator privileges are a good thing but not when they are initiated multiple times for a single drag and drop which then fails! Dragging and dropping Start menu items to improve the layout is the main culprit here.

The Sidebar - it's nice to have gadgets on the desktop to keep you updated but sometimes Vista reorders the way they are displayed as it boots up. This is basic stuff and can be very irritating.

Folders that can't remember their display settings. XP suffers from this as well but Vista seems to be far worse. I am never sure when either Control Panel or Windows Explorer will resize themselves when launched. Again, this is basic stuff. As a user if I double-click a desktop shortcut I expect to see the same behaviour each time. Vista also seems to forget that I have set some folders up to display full file details. I navigate to the folder and I have a few dozen large icons displayed instead. It isn't as though anybody else used the PC.

From the above you would imagine that I wouldn't install Vista again. Oddly enough I would, but that's only because I'm a technophile and I know that, like it or not, Vista won't go away but, in time, XP will.

Just a quick update on my Sidebar issue raised above. While looking for a solution to the gadgets occasionally re-ordering themselves when Vista starts up I discovered that you can drag them off the sidebar onto the Desktop and then close the Sidebar after having told it not to start up with the computer. The downside is that some of the gadgets get bigger and so take up more space. On the other hand, the standard weather gadget now gives me a three day forecast.

The next time you boot there follows a Doh! moment as the gadgets don't appear. You can solve this by creating a "Sidebar" shortcut ("%ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe") in your Progams/Startup folder. This is not the same as configuring the Sidebar to Open with Windows as while the gadgets are now on the Desktop the Sidebar window (that keeps stealing the focus from the notification area) doesn't appear, though its own icon is now in the notification area allowing you to configure it further if you want.

While I can definitely see the benefit of 64bit Vista. I don't see any real benefit right now. Slowly slowly more and more games are becoming quad core and so on. While I do plan on going for 64 bit Vista eventually, I am still content with XP.

I'm so used to the settings and how my system runs, I really can't be bothered with a new O.S right now.

I'm certainly interested to hear how things go. Recently with my stitching of multiple 15MP images off the 50D, the 2GB of my current system is feeling very tight. The limit for a 32-bit OS means to go much above that, you have to go 64, which practically means Vista 64. Think I'll bite once the nehalem compatible mobos are a bit cheaper...

I'm too lazy to find the reference on Adobe's web site right now, but even 32 bit Photoshop will get a boost from more memory if you're memory limited in operations. The increased 64 bit processing performance, while nice, is to me a smaller secondary factor.

I would consider, going to 64-bit but most of the programs i use, would prob not run on 64-bit! Also am i right in thinking that say if you had 5GB of ram installed in a 32-bit machine, the actual OS would only be able to use 3.2GB, but a program, say like photoshop, could use all 5gb of it?
Also, why on earth is there a 3.2GB limit on 32-bit windows? Also what is the main difference between a 64 and 32 bit OS?
Cheers

The maximum usable ram figure is not constant. A 32-bit OS can only see 4GB of address space without using tricks which are not widely supported. The video ram is mapped into that address space, as well as other devices doing similar, leaving the rest as the ram ceiling. So while I can easily upgrade to 3 GB of physical ram in my current XP system, it will take an OS change to go significantly higher.